


look at you you’re raw flesh and bones

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, mentions of drug use/abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 23:24:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn's been going to London for something. Harry follows him to figure out what it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	look at you you’re raw flesh and bones

Horrified, Zayn practically flew at the unsightly pair, ripping the familiar boys’ roaming hands from Perrie’s arse and twisting the slender frame so their eyes met. Zayn’s hands gripped Harry’s wrists a little tighter when he saw the emerald green almost vanished rimmed in sinful red and engulfed with blown pupils. Harry smirked at Perrie, and gave a flirty wink before licking his lips. “What did you do to him!” he spat at Perrie. She merely giggled and held up her hands in defence.

Harry’s head whipped round at Zayn’s stern tone and looked him in the eye. His brows furrowed for a second, but then something sparkled and he roared.  “Ohhhh Zaynie! Baby! IT’S YOU! Zayn Malik, light of my life and fire of my looooins!” Harry’s head brewed a storm and his lips rained profanities but the filter in his brain had stopped working when Perrie had slipped _onetwothreefourandonemoreforluck_ sweet little pills into his awaiting mouth. His nose tingled from the powdery substance still clinging to the hairs in his nostrils but it all felt wonderful. Destruction coursed through his veins and it all felt wonderful. This was why Zayn liked it so much; the thrum of a different pulse, the beat of someone else’s heart, the otherworldly voices whispering sweet nothings in his ear from inside his head.

Zayn scowled at Perrie, and then turned back to Harry who promptly continued his slurred rendition of a passage from _Lolita._ And Zayn thought that was just _so_ Harry. Lolita. Harry had started, Zayn might aswell let him finish.

“My sin. My soul. Zayn-ma-lik: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Zayn-Ma-lik.” Zayn gripped Harry’s wrists tighter and practically marched them out of the back door of the club.

“What were you thinking?” and Zayn’s tone is stern again, almost fatherly or brotherly and much beyond his years but then Zayn always was somehow older. Harry absently wonders if maybe Liam Payne had rubbed off a little on Zayn. Harry reckons he has a cheek; in disgust he wrinkles his nose. Liam is the only one allowed to use that tone and he can’t bite back the remark that is spilling from his mouth.

“Pff! I could ask you the same! In fact, I will. What the fuck are you doing here again?!” and he puts emphasis on the crude words hoping to get something through to Zayn, hoping to make him realize he’s serious.

“I asked you first, so I’ll ask again. What were you thinking?” and Zayn is beyond his years and before his years all in one statement. Something hot paints Harry’s cheeks in a deep red.

“Oh you’re so flippin’ immature!”

“Answer me!” Zayn is doing a pretty good job of pretending to be Liam but Harry knows it’s a front to mask his fear and his instability. Harry knows.

“Why should I? You won’t answer me. You never fucking do.” And the statement is perfectly valid but when Zayn’s eyes flash it’s obvious he thinks otherwise.

“You wanna know what I think?” Perrie chirped as if she was not witnessing a potential breakup.

“NO!”

“I think, well no, I know, Zayn was getting high. Extremely high. For what reason I can only assume. And I can guess he was lying about it, so Harry followed him. Which is where I come in. Harry wanted to know why you kept coming back, Zayn, and I don’t blame him; so I offered him your favourite. (Ecstasy mixed with cocaine, with a triple shot of absinthe to wash it down). So we’ve established the facts?” Perrie offered. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds to sort out your bad eggs.” And as if she hadn’t just contributed to the bullets being frantically shot round after round, Perrie walked back into the club, hips swaying.

There was a painful silence before anyone spoke again.

“So when did it happen?” Harry rasped, his voice hoarse as if it’d been unused for days. He felt as though he’d swallowed razors as sharp as Zayn’s cheekbones.

“When did what happen, love?” Zayn asked with a noticeable lilt to his voice, all argument forgotten for the minute. He sounded nonchalant and breezy as though he hadn’t just been caught about to inject himself with God knows what on a dance floor in a nightclub. Harry figured he already had a lot of the destruction in his bloodstream; why else would he be like this? 

“Don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t pretend you haven’t got the slightest clue, I’m not stupid! I know you’ve been coming here for months.” 

“Yeah?” Zayn’s voice and posture dropped now and Harry knew it was out of pure guilt.

“Yeah. So don’t give me any bullshit, Zayn. When did it happen? When did I lose you to all this?”  Harry jabbed wildly in the direction of the throbbing music, eyes wide.

“Because I can’t pinpoint it. I can’t. You were there like always reliable as the stars and then you weren’t you were gone in the blink of an eye. At least if it’d of been gradual I might have been able to handle this better and hell I might not have even followed you here but you j-just disappeared on me. A voice mail, _‘Oh by the way Grammie is super sick and I’m staying here for a couple of months.’_ And you didn’t even think to discuss it or call me again? Is she even sick, Zayn!? ” Zayn grips Harry’s wrist lightly and his blown pupils travel to the spot where bronze meets bone white and then there’s something falling from beneath his eyelids and glistening in the moonlight. There’s a _longlonglong_ pause as more and more tears paint train tracks on Zayn’s cheeks and his chin.

Their breath is coming out in white clouds and Zayn shudders, his loose fitting teeshirt clinging from his _thinthinthin_ frame and bones sickeningly visible everywhere. Looking at him properly in the silver light, really looking at him and seeing him in a place other than home Harry shudders too and repeats the question in his head as he looks at the strange, broken boy stood before him. When did I lose you?

And Harry supposes Zayn is iridescent in his present state. He’s coloured in silver moonlight, in forget-me-not turmoil, in crimson red that drips from his wounds and so many other emotions and splashes of light and shadow and he’s as layered as the skin that stretches so tightly and thinly over his porcelain bones. He’s like an aged book with crumbling pages written in an undecipherable language; all the words and letters and emotions are there embedded in the foundation of the paling paper but they’re scattered and lost and incoherent and Harry is struggling to string them all together, make sense of them, understand. He’s afraid if he tries to turn the page it’ll disintegrate in his fingers.

The little patch of skin on his wrist is bleaching whiter by the second and throbbing with a _franticfranticfrantic_ pulse and all the while Zayn is clinging onto him for dear life, now holding him so tight the bronzed knuckles have bleached bright white too and Harry thinks maybe he's afraid to let go. Harry thinks they’ve both been holding on this tight since the beginning. Harry thinks this is where they will finally break, let go. 

“She’s dying, Harry! Okay? She’s dying,” Harry blinked with his eyes like the tide ( _glimmering green eyes that lure you in and drown you in their brilliance with every shifting of a full moon_ ) all owlish and fragile and emerald and at that moment something inside Zayn cracked, “I should have told you I know but I’m a spectacular twat so I didn’t. I met a guy instead. The one you just saw me with; he’s my cousins’ drug dealer and he’s been mine ever since I started coming here,” _(“I’m terrified of what I feel and so you lost me the minute you found me. I can’t confess my love for you so I shut the words away with blown pupils and a bloodstream laced with destruction.”)_

Zayn waited for Harry’s reaction but he just pulled the left side of his bottom lip between his teeth and blinked again so Zayn continued though it caused him physical pain to even think or breathe while Harry looked so breakable. “So me and you, we can’t be together Haz. I’ve made you unhappy and I’ve been a twat and I’ve gone and fallen completely arse over tit for somebody else and you need someone who won’t do that. They won’t even consider looking at anyone else, drunk or high or sober. Someone who’ll make you happy…who won’t break you and is…in love…with you. And right now, I’m not that person,” _I am. I am. I am that person, please, why can’t you see?_

Harry blinked rapidly now and his hand enveloped the bronze hand that wasn’t holding onto his wrist, and fingers twined like the fibres of a rope. “You are that person. You are. I’m already broken, remember, Zayn. I put myself back together…but I did it all wrong. I need you,” his whole body heaved and he moved closer, white clouds mingled and the air around them grew a little warmer.

Harry could see Zayn was the one woven into his destiny and Zayn knew because Harry had said it. But Zayn still couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth.

“No you don’t. You need me like a bullet in the chest,” and Zayn knew it was the absolute truth and an absolute lie all in one. Knew he’d already lodged enough bullets in Harry’s chest; they still gleamed in astronomical light. And the sound of bones and something vital breaking still echoes in Zayn’s head. And Harry’s blood still trickles like a stream down his chest staining everything a deep crimson. But Harry does need him.

“Everybody needs a bullet in the chest, Zayn,”

_(But you have thousands.)_

“Pain. It’s what we need to remind ourselves we’re alive. But you don’t understand,”

_(But I do.)_

“You can’t,”

_(I can.)_

“You never did.” 

_(I always did.)_

“I don’t care how much it fucking hurts, okay, I don’t. I’ve taken your bullets before,”

_(Yes…thousands too many.)_

“,and you’ve taken plenty of mine too,”

_(It was never enough, though...)_

“,we hurt each other all the time; it’s just what we do. And it reminds us how much we love each other. I just want you to know I need you and I just want you to tell me you need me back; because I know how much you do,”  

_(I do. I do. I do. I need you. )_

“You said so yourself. I fix you. I fixed us. I fixed us with a kiss when we were fourteen.  You said. You said that, you said yourself. You told me.”

 _(Yes, I did tell you.)_ Zayn noticed Harry’s voice crack and _a_ lone tear that strolled effortless and silver down his pink hued cheek.

“Harry, you’re not listening. If I loved you like you think I do, then I would have never even considered looking at anyone else. Never. But I did look at someone else and I fell in love with him,” ( _What I’m trying to say is I never would have pretended to love someone else if I wasn’t so afraid of what I felt for you. If I was braver.)_

“Bu-“

“No, Harry. I’m telling the truth. I really did. And I can’t be in love with two people at once, Jesus I can barely handle one, and I promise as of now I won’t lie to you anymore,” _(But I’m lying to you now.)_

“What’s changed in the space of two minutes?”

“I realized how many bullets are lodged in your chest; soon you won’t be blood and muscle and sinew…you’ll be silver and gunpowder. And I don’t want you like that. I don’t want you at all. I want him, I won’t lie,“ Harry recoiled, “No listen. I don’t want you - I need you,”

“Then why are you choosing him; London? This destruction?” Harry’s eyebrows furrowed.

“I want it. Someone wise beyond their years once told me that what we want isn’t necessarily what we always need, and what we need….isn’t necessarily what we always want. And for something to be truly ours we have to both want and need at precisely the same time or else we can’t have it,”

“Oh…”

“Yeah,” and again Harry looked so breakable and so much like the bullets were weighing down his soul that Zayn had to cast his gaze to the floor to stop himself saying what he really wanted to say.

“Well can’t that someone take back those words?” Zayn saw from his peripheral vision that Harry had looked with pleading eyes, almost as if mentally begging the clock to be turned back to the day that someone said those words.

“Not if they’re already embedded in the stars…” and Harry blinked again owlish and emerald and another lone tear stained his cheek. “Kiss with a fist?”

“No I won’t let you stand there and lie to me, Zayn. Please, just tell me the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Yeah…”

“I – I’ve never loved you, Harry, and never will. You really think I could love someone like you? All books and intelligence and charm. I’m nothing like you. We have nothing in common. I only stayed around because I thought I could change you. But you…you’re too pure for me.” _(I’ve always loved you, Harry and always will. It’s so fucking hard. I don’t care that we’re nothing alike. You balance me out, make me mellow. I only stayed around because I thought you could change me. But me…I’m too fucked in the head for you. You’re better off without me.)_ Zayn’s voice cracked.

“So that’s it then? Nineteen years just…thrown away?”

“Yes. I want you to throw them all away, all of them. Forget about me. Go back to Cheshire and forget I ever fucking existed Harry, because honestly, I think you’ll feel a whole lot better for it.”

“I won’t.”

“You will. There’s loads of nicer lads there. I should know eh?”

“I know you never cheated with anyone there, Zayn…”

“Haz…”

“So is this what letting go feels like?” and Harry pressed the heels of his hands into his temples as his eyebrows knitted together for what seemed like the thousandth time tonight. He sniffled once and cast a look to the ground before meeting Zayn’s eye’s (the orbs in which Harry sees infinity and only infinity and like a black hole all things gravitate towards them).

“Yes.” _(We’re not letting go, ever. We’re just loosening our grip a little that’s all love_ , _but how am I supposed to tell you that? How am I supposed to tell you that I don’t want you to forget me, ever, and I just want to stay with you?_ )

Harry’s shoulders slumped and his arms fell slack to his sides. He didn’t much care about the cold air that whistled freely through his teeth and the crevice between his elbow and ribs and his hair.  

“I’ll miss having someone to keep hold of,” In eight words their knuckles gained colour and their grip loosened a little; light filled and flooded all the broken bones and internal organs and melted down all the bullets and Harry sighed in relief.

“You’ll find someone else, I know you will,” And Zayn’s voice was filled to bursting with sincerity and fear and guilt but Harry asked anyway.

“Will I?”

“I believe you will, ( _but I don’t want you to_ …)” and there again was the honesty in a deadly cocktail of fault and anxiety. 

“Come back to me? When the time’s right,”

( _People fated to be together always find their way back._ ) “In that case I won’t ever be coming back. I’m never gonna change, Harry…”

Fate has had their names in the same deck of cards since before Time was born and she’s been there twining and coiling and knotting Harry +Zayn and Zayn+Harry and Zayn=Harry and Harry =Zayn. And so no matter where they go or how many miles and years separate their bodies they will be always inextricably linked. Synapses and nerve endings and tendons. Muscle tissue and cranial activity. Veins and sinew. Bone marrow. Internal organs. No amount of struggling or running or misplaced love or even misuse of the word can separate them. Zayn’s eyes are filled with gravity and Harry orbits them always. There’s an anchor tied with a knot that holds them tighter than Fate herself lodged in Zayn’s collarbone and Harry put it there and he is holding the rope. So you see in the grand scheme of things, they will for always be inextricably irrevocably indefinitely linked. 

“You don’t have to change. In fact, I forbid you to. I’ll meet you in the middle,” Harry knew they would because they always did meet in the middle with everything; Zayn was afraid of the shadows and Harry was afraid that if the light got too bright he might not be able to find his way.

So they found their way to the middle ground where their faces were lit as if by candlelight and they marvelled in the angles and mystery.

“I’ll be waiting. And even if we’re seventy five and decrepit and barely know each other before I find you again, remember, I loved you once, I love you still, always have and always will. I care too much to let something like this eat away at me.”

Even now Zayn cursed himself and his own thoughts came back to him if not a little mistier than last time, you’re actually in love you monumental twat. In love. In love. In love. And there we were thinking you had a walnut where your heart should be. Just suck it up. Tell him before he finds someone else that needs fixing, “But it’s too late now.” He whispers under his breath. “look at you, you’re raw flesh and bones…”


End file.
